Capuchin

Thanks hlywdkjk! The thing about the preferred studio confused me,

Pardon my being dense, but I need a bit of clarification about premieres -- If a movie has been shown on TCM before, even if it's not in the listed libraries, is it still fair game to use as a p/s? Do *all* premiers have to be from the listed libraries? I was thinking of having a SOTM whose works are mostly from Toho, and I was expecting to use four or five of my premieres there (but I wasn't going to use Toho as the 'preferred studio"). Do I have to rethink that? If they do have to be from those libraries, does that also apply to Silent Sunday, Imports, and Underground? Sorry for being so thick-headed . . .

Wow! Great challenge! Well, I'm done. Nearly. I had an idea for the first of a month, and this morning had an epiphany on how to combine two 'weak but possible' themes into one which will fill up the other six daytimes. And then, as soon as I read *Food, Glorious Food* my perverse nature burst with a completely off the wall idea good for a couple of evenings. All that's left for me now is to find the movies to fit the themes, juggle them into position, fill out a few evenings, and Bob's your uncle! Unless I hit something unexpected, I probably won't pull out more than five or six tufts of hair this time. Good luck to everyone! Thanks lzcutter!

> {quote:title=ValentineXavier wrote:}{quote} > The upshot is that TCM likely has NOTHING to do with this problem, it was probably a problem with your satellite/cable provider. Some people with UVerse, others with Cablevision, and I with DirecTV all had the same problem at the start of the same movie. That tells me that it isn't a satellite/cable provider problem.

> {quote:title=Sprocket_Man wrote:}{quote} > > {quote:title=Capuchin wrote:}{quote} > > Widescreen dates back to 1931 -- > > Widescreen cinema dates back to at least 1927, with the three-panel triptyches for parts of Abel Gance's NAPOLEON. I was talking about widescreen tv, not film.

> Did anyone noticed the widescreen Hi Def TV set in the movie. Who knew in 1966 that in the future, people would be watching Fahrenheit 9/11 on it? (that in itself is just cause to take a flame thrower to it) Widescreen dates back to 1931 -- http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2009/09/15/television-shows-full-size-images/ (A ten-foot wide tv screen predicted "television theatres.") Flat-screen? Invented in 1957 -- http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2006/04/09/flat-screen-tv-in-1958/ (A CRT only two inches thick.) Wanting to take a flamethrower to the boobtube? Ageless. >A lady was noticing all the roof mounted antennas and said "look at that house, nothing". DUH, Maybe they got cable! Maybe we haven't advanced to that stage yet. I recently read an article on the growing popularity of rabbit ears. Because of the digital switch, there are many more local, very specialized, channels available in some cities. Cable systems will never be able to cope with the hundreds of new channels, and even satellite capacity has a cap. There is a legitimate business model for a service offering a mix of 'cable' channels (like TCM) and local offerings rebroadcast to subscribers in a limited area. With the new digital enhancements, the signal would be equivalent in quality to satellite reception. >In the future it turns out there was no need to burn books, we simply stop reading them. Curiously, more books are being sold now than ever before. Granted that many are 'Dummy' books on how to make Windows seem to work, the fiction market is still healthy. Until they start selling e-books with hard covers and flexible pages displaying the text, people will keep buying print versions.

> {quote:title=hamradio wrote:}{quote} > If you think that hobby is extreme, look at this one > > http://www.toytrainrevue.com/lash.htm > > $60,000 *just* on the little trees!!!! That's not nearly as expensive as the 'scenery' surrounding this model train: http://www.pppl.gov/PPPLnews101.cfm (Researchers put a locomotive on a circular track inside the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX).)

> {quote:title=lzcutter wrote:}{quote} > The winner of this Challenge will moderate the next Challenge. What lzcutter is too modest to point out is that she's hosting this challenge because she won the last one, and a couple before that. Although the rules vary according to who is setting it, the basic framework generally stays the same. You can see a typical one and the schedules people created at: http://forums.tcm.com/jive/tcm/thread.jspa?threadID=139071&start=150&tstart=0 While most people who've entered will tell you it's extremely frustrating and a lot of hard work, it's also a lot of fun, and it'll give you an insight into how hard it is to be a programmer.

> {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote} > I successfully recorded The Scarlet Claw via Directv. It recorded on tape ok, and I'm dubbing it over to DVD right now. Great -- rub it in! One of two that I really, really wanted and now the only Rathbone/Bruce movie I don't have . . . I have only tested bits here and there, and I haven't found another movie on TCM with the copy protection my DVD recorder recognizes. I'm strongly tempted to start prowling the pawn shops for an old DVD recorder that doesn't have the cp info. Even if I had to put a new burner in it, it'd be cheaper than a Grex.

lzcutter -- Thanks! (Now if I can just read my handwriting in all the notes I jotted down . . . .anyone know what "col frope tunny" might mean?)

> {quote:title=WhitSt wrote:}{quote} > Don't worry there's some kid in Finland figuring out the hack as we speak. Google "grex video stabilizer"

I know this is a little strange (what else can you expect from me), but is it possible to get a pre-rules ruling? A couple of weeks ago, I thought of what might be a good theme, but it requires being on the first of a particular month. Unfortunately, neither in 2010 nor 2011 does that date fall on a Saturday. I looked through a couple of the previous challenge threads and couldn't find an example where a schedule covers the last few days of one month and the first few days of the next. I don't know if that's by chance or if there's a bias against such bridging -- obviously it couldn't appear as a cohesive unit in an issue of Now Playing. So -- would it be legit, or not? Also (being one to always keep exploring weirdness), if it is acceptable, could the schedule include two STOMs, one for the closing month and the other for the new month? As long as I've got your attention -- for the last 4-5 months I've been jotting down every halfway decent idea that's come to me. Most are not strong enough to be worth a whole morning or evening, and the few good ones probably don't have very many appropriate movies. What kind of ruling would you give on a schedule where each movie is it's own separate theme?

I have a Sony, which recognizes every copy protection scheme anybody ever thought of -- even the commercials on NGC and IFC shut the recorder off -- but I never had a problem recording anything off TCM until Saturday. This could not have been a fluke since it hit copy protection just as *The Scarlet Claw* started and the copy protection was in place until the intro for *The Pearl of Death* began. That was the only movie in the 24-hour Holmes marathon I couldn't record. I have DirecTV (TCM is channel 256). I checked a couple of movies today (*The Merry Widow* and whatever is on right now) and was able to record a couple of minutes of each with no problem. The only suggestions I've been able to get from people familiar with copy protection: 1) Get a recorder with a hard-disk -- you can often save to a drive even when you can't copy to a DVD. 2) Degrade your system back to VHS. 3) Buy a cheap DVD recorder -- the more primitive the electronics, the less likely it will recognize the various copy protection schemes (I've had both Philips and Panasonics that wouldn't let me record from purchased VHS tapes but didn't see the copy protections on any broadcast programs). One other little tip -- if you hit a copy-protected program, switch the recorder's input to something else and back again (i.e. if it's set to LineIn1, switch to LineIn2 and back to LineIn1). It won't make a difference as far as recording that program, but sometimes there's a latency in the copy protection marker, and the recorder might still see it when you want to record a non-copy protected program.

> {quote:title=TikiSoo wrote:}{quote} > The bigger question is why people enjoy watching others dance. On a psychological level, as humans, we are hunters. Our eyes are engaged by a moving object, not unlike a dog seeing a bolting cat or squirrel. You might be interested in researching "mirror neurons" -- they're the part of the brain that makes you feel like you're doing what you're seeing. Most people like watching others dance or play games because it gives them a sense that they're also doing it. I'm not one of those people. Dancing, football, etc. all leave me cold. But FA was a more-than-adequate actor outside of his routines, and I enjoy most of his movies despite the footwork.

Hauru no ugoku shiro (2004) was the only one of the decade that is even close to great, and that isn't up to Hayao Miyazaki's usual standards.

The best definition I've found for 'classic' is something that has survived in the public consciousness for generations because of it's superior quality. The question is what constitutes a 'generation.' For people, it's considered 30 years, but in cars, furniture, fashion, etc. it can be as little as five years (anything shorter is considered a fad rather than a true genesis). Has anyone identified the generations in film like we have for people (baby-boomers, gen-x, etc.)? Complicating matters is the fact that brand-new things can be classics because their style is an acknowledged classic, like a 21st Century manufacture of an Eames chair. As for TCM programming -- I'd be a hypocrite if I lambasted all recent movies because they're shown some that I really like and which aren't readily available anywhere else. My take on it is that the movies I wouldn't personally schedule are like commercials -- they're shown to pay the bills, and it's great that they are in blocks I can easily avoid rather than being intrusive bites out of the good stuff. All in all -- *TCM is the greatest!* If all you can see are the warts, you never really fell in love with her!

Remember the Night (1940) -- I like this a lot, but not enough to watch it again so soon. Christmas In July (1940) -- If this is the one I think it is, great. If it's one I haven't seen before, better! Chicken Every Sunday (1948) -- Great fan of Celeste Holm, but this is far from a favorite. Star In The Night (1945) -- I'm very interested in seeing this. Meet Me In St. Louis (1944) and In The Good Old Summertime (1949) -- I have no need for an emetic.

You give it for an actor's mediocre performance after snubbing their great work a couple of years before.

I think it's unfortunate there are so few examples of Santa Claus in classic movies. I guess it's because of the distribution system of the time (I remember hearing/reading somewhere that *Christmas in Connecticut* was a gamble because it wouldn't hit some theatres before August.) We can see how angels, demons, liberated ladies, or just about any other mythic were represented or thought of during every decade, except for Santa and the Easter Bunny. And I have to wonder how Gwenn's performance might have been different if he'd been coming off of a long line of classic Santas rather than virtually having to create the character from scratch.

Apart from Edmund Gwenn in *Miracle on 34th Street* who was the best movie Santa Claus?

It may be my perverse nature, but I've always considered the Sovereign Military Order of Malta as not only the smallest country but also the smallest there can be since it has absolutely no territory (its headquarters has embassy (extraterritoriality) status, but there's no bordered land they call their own). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Malta *Star Trek Generations . . . Loved those one liners I almost forgot about* My absolute favorite ST line was when Data looked at a bottle of liquor. I kept thinking "Don't say it, don't say it . . ." but he did, and his line "It's green." had me laughing to hard I missed the next several minutes of the show. (You might have to be a Trekkie (or Trekite) to get the reference -- Scotty said the same line in similar circumstances in the original ST.) *the Q-bomb . . . might be more effective as a QUEUE bomb.* Unfortunately, I had the same idea. I say unfortunately because it ruined the movie for me -- I now, quite involuntarily, visualize the Rowan Atkinson routine where he's the devil welcoming new arrivals to his realm and tells the adulterers to line up in front of a little guillotine.

For those who might be a little hesitant about Kurosawa or know him only from *Seven Samuri* I'd suggest you record *Ikiru* and watch *The Hidden Fortress* first -- it's a great way to get into his style without being confronted by his edge. Although others will disagree with me (they usually do), his best are (in no particular order): *The Hidden Fortress* *Throne of Blood* *Iriku* *Scandal* *Yojimbo* *The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail* *Rashomon* *Seven Samurai* *Kagemusha* The others are only-great instead of fantastically-great.

I'm just surprised no one in Hollywood has decided to do a CGI and 3-D version of "Waiting for Godot."

While the remake is a great movie (one of the few really, really good ones of its decade), imnsho it falls far short of the original in all aspects except the line: "the only living heart donor." That line is worthy of Wilder!

It looked like another "wonderful movies, but I've seen all the great ones" schedule . . . . . . until . . . *Akira Kurosawa* on the 9th! *Ikiru* *Throne of Blood* *The Hidden Fortress* (a bit of a typo there -- it lists Toshir? Mifune as the director) *Hakuchi* (although I have to admit a bit of a disappointment that they're going with the short (166 minutes) version rather than the complete film (265 minutes) *The Lower Depths* Then it gets better -- *The Bad Sleep Well* *High And Low* *Red Beard* *I Live In Fear* *Scandal* And then we hit the motherload!!!! *A Whole Day of Kurosawa* on the 23rd!!!! *Sanshiro Sugata* *The Most Beautiful* *The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail* *Sanshiro Sugata Part 2* *No Regrets For Our Youth* *One Wonderful Sunday* *Drunken Angel* *Stray Dog* *Rashomon* *Seven Samurai* *Yojimbo* *Sanjuro* *Dodes 'Ka-Den* And then it trails off with only-great movies -- *Dersu Uzala* *Kagemusha* *Ran* WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW